


you gut me in the bathroom

by lonelyghosts



Series: adventures in quadrants [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Child Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, F/F, FLARP, Grooming, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Touch-Starved, Trans Kanaya Maryam, Trans Vriska Serket, Unhealthy Kismesissitude, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-06-07 08:58:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15215654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelyghosts/pseuds/lonelyghosts
Summary: It is easier to hate than it is to love, and Vriska Serket is not easy to love.





	1. your spiderqueen

**Author's Note:**

> vriska is a poorly socialized abused child and it's really sad to think about her development and her love life, especially considering how many spades crushes she inspired in others and how much she wanted to just be loved. 
> 
> the title is taken from this [anonymous poem](http://mythaelogy.tumblr.com/post/147920183076/you-gut-me-in-the-bathroom-and-flush-my-body-down)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here is the beginning- the spun web in the dark, the lines of silk hanging silver over you. She is an extension of you, and you are incapable of not loving her and her clicking mouth and her eight shining eyes. She is your Mother, though you do not know what that means. She is your jailer, your commander. You are a pirate queen and she is the true captain of your crew, who lies secret and darkly glittering in the belly of your ship. She is your large and terrifying heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> vriska has problems :(

Here is the beginning- the spun web in the dark, the lines of silk hanging silver over you. She is an extension of you, and you are incapable of not loving her and her clicking mouth and her eight shining eyes. She is your Mother, though you do not know what that means. She is your jailer, your commander. You are a pirate queen and she is the true captain of your crew, who lies secret and darkly glittering in the belly of your ship. She is your large and terrifying heart. 

She is not yet so big that she cannot leave the moat-cavern of your hive, but she has always been too lazy to hunt for herself. You are freshly enlisted in the bloody hungry war she wages, and your hands are only beginning to accrue blood. You have not yet begun your monstrous transformation into something unredeemable, but it is so close that you can taste it, acrid unease in your mouth.

Here is the true beginning. You come back from a FLARP session without any bodies. You have forgotten your obligation- it is still new to you, and so you sit there babbling in the way new grubs do- about their days, about their newest accomplishments, about what they've done- when one of her many legs taps your chin to direct your gaze upwards, and you remember abruptly your mistake and begin to sputter apologies. 

You are at first afraid that she will eat  _you_ , but she hears your thought before you can even really process it and simply whispers the shake of her head directly into your brain- _no, little grub, you are not getting off that easy_. Your confusion is plain on your face, but before she can clarify the gravel behind you crunches and you realize. 

You came home without bodies. You did not come back alone. 

She is your first FLARP partner, an oliveblood only a sweep older than you. Her name is Miriel and she is your first moirail. You do not yet know much of the quadrants and how to navigate them, but you know that Miriel makes your bloodpusher calm down, and that your body loses the long tendrils of tension along your back. You do not love her, but she is the closest to you than anyone else. You are only two sweeps old. 

When Spidermom looks at her with hunger in her face, spittle dripping from her mouth, you know immediately that Miriel will not leave your hive again.

After, your Mother licks olive off her fangs and sighs, low and long, at your cerulean tears. She cocoons you in her silken web as you sob and beat your tiny gray fists against her, rolling her eight eyes the whole time, and when you are exhausted, she holds you tightly and whispers into your mind.

 _You need to learn, little grub_. Her voice is creeping and reaches into every part of your brain, takes all of you and taints it.  _No one is ever going to love you, Vriska. You are not someone who can be loved._

That's the beginning.

 


	2. your vengeful ghost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aradia Megido is the first girl you realize you love.

  1. _the ghost_



Aradia Megido is the first girl you realize you love.

She is chubby and a little shorter than you; she is reckless and laughing. She is more than a little creepy, she wants to be an archorrorologist- she showed up to your FLARP session once with a crown of old troll bones on her head and it looked fucking beautiful. She is absurdly beautiful.

The first time that you see her you have to suppress a squeak. Every time that you FLARP you can't help but add in little moments between your characters- a pause, a smoldering gaze, a smirk.

You think you're being subtle about it, but it turns out you're not all that good at it, because she ends up sending you a private message on Trollian one night after a grueling and particularly tension-laden FLARP. The resulting exchange is long and laden with innuendo- it turns out that Aradia is almost as reckless as you.

You begin a flirtation that waxes red and black every so often, and you feel kinda skeezy about it because you don't know if her boyfriend Sollux is red or pale or black or what, but you can't bring yourself to stop.

It lasts a perigee before you go too far.

She catches you bringing  a boy back to your hive- some dumb rustblood who cheated during a game and thought he could get away with it- and it turns out his hive is down the street from hers. You get away without her realizing what his fate is to be, but when he never comes back to his hive, she figures out what happened.

That is the beginning of her hating you.

It only gets worse from there. Perigees later you lead Tavros off a cliff and she is vengeance personified; she is full of rage, and she brings back your ghosts to haunt you. You cry looking at every single one of them. Miriel whispers your mother's words into your ear. _How could you_? she shrieks, and you crumple with guilt. You reach for what you can to make it stop almost unconsciously, grab onto the first suggestion and proceed without a second thought.

The minute that Aradia dies and the ghosts flicker out like turning on an old, long-unused light, you regret your actions. You don't cry, but you stopped crying a long time ago. It is then that you contact Equius, shove aureii at him without caring for how much it costs. You try, as best you can, to apologize.

Of course, it doesn't work. She asks if you were ever friends and you tell her that you wanted to be. But every time that you try to love someone you end up hurting them; you were never made for love. You were never made to _be_ loved.

In the game, she finds you with Tavros, playing games and speeding across your planet while trying to believe you don't ruin everything you love, and beats you to pieces till your blood is on her hands. It is pitch-black kismesis and you lean into it, feel the opening blue wounds on your face when the rivets of her knuckles cut open on a punch.

Here is proof that you are important, you think to yourself as she breaks four ribs with a single blow. Important in all the wrong ways, sure, but still important. Here is proof that even if you'll never be loved, at least someone cares enough to hate you.


	3. your puppetmaster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He is the first taste of any kind of real affection that you are given.

     2. _the guardian_

You don't like thinking about him. He makes your skin crawl. He makes you want to hide.

But he is good to you, in his own twisted and fucked up way. He is suspiciously intelligent, more knowledgeable than anyone you know, and much older than you or any of your friends, and he is trying to help you- telling you about things in the future, guiding your actions so things go right, so you are shaped into the right tool, whatever he means by that.

And he's kind about it. Spidermom tries to shape you into her perfect soldier-slash-troll-child-provider, and her treatment leaves you hurting and blinking back tears, your jaw set into a hard line. He isn't like that- at least, you think he isn't. When you read his white text, you try to imagine a voice you've never heard being gentle. 

_This is the way things are supposed to be._

_You're going to do this, Vriska, I've seen it. There's no escaping it._

_It's happening like this, Vriska. I know you, and I know what you'll do._

_You'd do this even without me._

_No one understands you like I do, Vriska,_ he tells you. You're pretty sure he's right. 

You can't help but want him to love you, even though he's not a troll, even though he creeps you out sometimes (okay, most times), even though you are afraid of him. Even though he makes comments that make you want to cut yourself apart.

He calls you a girl, even though your Mother does not; even though he knows that your lips are simply gray as opposed to the black that Nepeta and Aradia and Terezi and Feferi all have biologically. He calls you a girl even though you don't bear the mammary sacks that girl trolls are supposed to, even though you have a flatter chest and your hair is thicker than most girls'. He is one of the only ones who knows about your body's failure to be the way it's supposed to, and he does not call you a boy. 

Sometimes he asks for pictures of you, bribes and begs for them, and you give them to him and he compliments how pretty you look, how young and supple and sweet.You laugh it off, say stuff like Um th8nks!!!!!!!! and try not to think about those moments. Terezi tells you that he creeps her out and you say I can handle it, okay, just d8n't talk to him, please Terezi, because you  _can_ handle it! You are strong enough, you were chosen for your lusus, so you can deal with a single creepy old man on your own. 

He betrays you, of course. It is inevitable. Your magic eight-ball explodes and takes your arm and eye and you knew the whole time that he never  _really_ meant what he was saying to you- no one could ever love you the way you hoped he did- but it doesn't change how much it hurts.

He is frightening, is what he is. Much, much later, Rose Lalonde will call him a predator and a pedophile and a manipulator, and privately, you will agree, but there is also a part of you that bristles at the thought. Doc Scratch is the first taste of any kind of real affection that you are given.


	4. your love labourer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You need pirate garb for FLARP that is accurate to Mindfang's own outfit but also doesn't look dumb on a little flat-chested girl who's mostly lanky limbs and bony knees and elbows. You need a shoulder to lean on that won't ask questions, someone capable of putting up with your bullshit. She needs money for her silks, someone to play dress up on, someone who will protect her from the advances of male highbloods. It is, you think, a good match.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> july 10th edit:  
> me, writing this chapter a day ago: yeah this is good  
> me, literally less than 20 hours later: shit ive got to edit it

_3\. rainbow drinker_

You think that the thing you like about Kanaya is that she is like you. 

Neither of your bodies match your true selves when you meet for the first time. She lends you her black lipstick and calls you by the right name and allows you to rant about FLARP opponents calling you a _he._ For your part, you lend her hair products and some of the things you stuff down your shirt to make it look as though your chest bears breasts. You link her to memes and the positivity pages that you 'just happened to stumble across' and _totally_ don't have bookmarked. 

The two of you have similar views on the world, also; she too is acquainted with dark things. Kanaya was raised to be a breeding cavern jadeblood, and if not for the approaching doom to befall you all, she'd be sentenced to walk forever in the dark with only the humming glow of the breathing cave walls to guide her; she who loves the sun so much. She fends off the undead that crawl throughout the blistering desert surrounding her hive and she has seen wretched things. Her lusus has told her bits of the future, and what is coming is something that children should not be forced through. 

You, for your part, have grown up with a spider crawling on your back, up your neck, and into your mind. You are well-acquainted with awful things, and so is she.

It's a good match for a moirallegiance, you think. You have learned now that moirallegiances are not about love or pity or comfort so much as they are about convenience, and the two of you are convenient.

You need pirate garb for FLARP that is accurate to Mindfang's own outfit but also doesn't look dumb on a little flat-chested girl who's mostly lanky limbs and bony knees and elbows. You need a shoulder to lean on that won't ask questions, someone capable of putting up with your bullshit. She needs money for her silks, someone to play dress up on, someone who will protect her from the advances of male highbloods. It is, you think, a good match.

And at first it is the perfect match. She hums and sews you into flowing, ruffled off-white blouses and brushes your hair and listens when you rant. You gush about her dresses and it is nowhere near insincere- she really _is_ good at this, better than any one person has any right to be. You bring some of Mindfang's old dresses and coats that were with her journal over to Kanaya's place and you laugh when she goes wide-eyed and makes a pet project out of restoring them. When Eridan flirts red with her, she tells you, and you make him pay on your next naval outing, yell at him about how he will not  _touch_ your gogdamn moirail while you are still living. You buy her pretty bolts of shimmering fabric when she runs out and present them as gifts for absurd 'anniversaries' like the anniversary of the first time she papped you or the first time that she called you her moirail for real. 

You realize how deep you're in when one night you realize that all the anniversaries you'd 'made up' had the correct date. Somewhere along the line, you become well and truly pale for Kanaya Maryam, and convenience had nothing to do with it anymore.

But your moirallegiance goes south far too quickly. You are blind to her flushed feelings and she is blind to how much you value her, pale-wise. She does not know about your lusus, either, and so more and more often you feel yourself snapping at her when she tries to comfort you- she could never understand the burden of a lusus like this. She does not understand why you are like this- broken, unlovable, flawed.

You kiss Tavros, and it is... disappointing, to say the least. Kanaya stops talking to you with the abruptness of a string being cut, but you don't make the connection till much, much later. Despite how often this happens- you fuck up in some way without knowing any better, and you ruin one of the only good things you have - it still surprises you. It still hurts- a sucker punch to your brittle heart. 

You kill Tavros and regret doing it immediately. He didn't deserve that, even if he wasn't strong like you. Tavros was just another victim of you and your stupid senseless self-hatred turned rage at the world. You hate Kanaya in a brief fit of rage for not stopping you before you feel the hate settle around your shoulders into the cape of self-loathing you've made.

She punches you in the face on the roof, and you slide twenty feet, easy, without stopping. You bring one hand up to your cheek and touch the place where her fist made sudden and painful contact with your face. The area is already swelling and you imagine that by next twilight, it will be an ugly perse shade. 

It is... kind of hot? As blackrom gestures go, it's about as forward as you can get. You're pretty sure you're bright blue from blushing.

The meteor trip is awful. She's so flushed for Lalonde it hurts to look at her- when Lalonde smiles at her, Kanaya glows like one of Alternia's moons waking up, having slept in. They dance around each other in their dumb, stupid, pretentious little ways. Both of them are so sophisticated and darling and  _advanced_ and you kind of hate both of them.

You're pretty sure they're flushed  _and_ pale for one another. You've walked in on them flirting in incredibly stupid ways- Rose curled up so close to Kanaya she's practically in her lap, reading from human poetry that you're certain is supposed to be frightening and creepy, but Rose reads it like it's erotic love poetry, her voice breathy soft and her callused fingers dancing up Kanaya's thighs. It's all under the guise of 'cultural exchange', but everyone on the meteor knows the poetry reading sessions for what they are. No one says anything, though, because Rose Lalonde is _frightening_. 

But you have also walked in on them cuddling, and Kanaya fussing over Rose's hair and Rose watching Kanaya stretch out in her sleep like a meowbeast in the sun, looking for the warmest spot. It is incredibly intimate, more so than the poetry, and when you walked in on Rose crying into Kanaya's lap, the only intelligible things sobs about the Furthest Rings and Horrorterrors, and Kanaya teary-eyed also, her hands in Rose's buzzed blonde hair and making the shooshing noises that she used to make for you, when your lusus was awful and your guilt caught up to you and you broke down in the only way you knew how- 

You step back and close the door. You tell yourself that you have no right to be jealous anymore. You tell yourself that it can't hurt. You're not allowed to hurt. You're Vriska Serket, and Vriska Serket does not hurt, ever. 

The worst part is that you'd thought that she'd never go black for you. You didn't think that Kanaya was  _capable_ of going black for someone. You'd accepted that she wasn't pale for you the way that you'd been for her, the way you still kind of were, and you were getting over it, really you were. But you'd never thought that she'd be stupid enough to want you in another quadrant again.

Kanaya, it turns out, is really determined to prove you wrong in every possible way.

It happens when, as usual, you make some dumb comment a couple perigees into the trip and she cuts her eyes at you. In the hallway later, when everyone else is asleep, she corners you. You try to ask how she is, in your usual obnoxious way, she snarls and shows all her teeth, spits out some insult- calls you A Manipulative Bitch Who Ruins Everything, and kisses you.

It is sharp, and full of teeth. She bites down on your lip and you wince despite yourself- rainbow drinker teeth are nothing to laugh at. But you're Vriska Serket, and you've got a reputation to uphold, gogdammit, so you give back as good as you've got- you dig your own teeth in, you grab handfuls of her hair and pull. You're the best kismesis there is- Eridan's ghost can tell her so, if she needs a recommendation- and if she wants to hate you, you will let her hate you. You are well-acquainted with it.

Thus begins your brief on-and-off-again spades trysts with your ex-moirail. She likes to bite down on your neck more than she likes to kiss you. Maybe it's because your blood taste good, or maybe it's because when she's biting she can feel like she's hurting you. That's fine- you always liked the biting and pulling and tearing part of spades, not because you like hurting your partner, but because it feels nice to be hurt. You let her hurt you. In this way you are being her moirail again, even if she doesn't know it- she needs to hate someone, to burn up all that rage, and so you can be that for her. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's better than nothing.

It lasts maybe a perigee or two before you make a comment about how she must be a "gr8 matesprit with such a biting kink, seriously Kanaya I'm almost jealous of your Rose human," after a long heated makeout session, and she tenses and snaps at you, says something mean and defensive. It's the move that she makes when she's upset and needs comforting and you forget yourself and reach instinctively for a horn to soothe her and she flinches away. You'd forgotten, just for a moment, that she's got a better moirail-slash-matesprit now, someone who can manage to actually comfort her, that you'd unintentionally spurned her flushed feelings for you. You'd been so close there, for a second, and you'd forgotten all that had happened, and for a second you'd just been six sweeps old and moirails again- you teasing, her rolling her eyes, a sense of fondness between you.

There are no more hidden-laboratory trysts, which leaves you feeling confused and alone and desperate to understand if you've really fucked it up for good this time. You send her a message on trollian only a few days later, looking for answers.

arachnidsGrip [AG] began trolling  grimAuxiliatrix [GA] at 11:06:53. 

AG: Hey Fussyfangs, you h8ven't come cr8wling 8ack for more yet! Did you get overwhelmed 8y the sheer m8gnitude of my ch8rms????????  
AG: Kanaya? Are y8u there?  
GA: Vriska  
AG: So you are alive! Wow, I was almost worried there that you'd gone and died on me and I hadn't even gotten the opportunity to see it!  
GA: Vriska, We Need To Talk

Oh. _Oh._

AG: Oh.   
GA: Listen Vriska I Really Want To Be Friends. You Were My Moirail And I Really Did And Do Care About You.  
GA: But In Order For That To Happen I Just Can't Keep Doing This Anymore  
AG: D8ing wh8t?  
GA: You Know What I'm Talking About  
GA: I'm Pretty Sure I'm Falling In Love With Rose, Vriska  
GA: In The Human Way  
GA: I Know It's Too Soon To Really Tell But I Don't Care. I Want To Be With Her.  
GA: And You Broke My Heart Vriska  
AG: I didn't m8an to K8n8ya. I re8lly d8dn't.  
GA: I Know You Didn't  
GA: Part Of That Was My Fault  
GA: I Should Have Told You  
GA: And I Know You Will Never Return Those Feelings  
GA: So I Am Going To Get Over This Stupid Crush For My Sake And For Your Sake And For Rose's Sake  
GA: But I Cannot Do That While Also Indulging The Red-Black Vacillation That I Have Been Feeling For You  
GA: So I Guess This Is Me Telling You It's Over  
GA: But We Can Still Be Friends Okay  
AG: ........ ok8y. If th8t's wh8t y8u w8nt.  
GA: It Is  
GA: I'll Talk To You Later Vriska But First Know This:  
GA: It's Best Like This. We're Better Off As Friends.  
grimAuxiliatrix [GA] ceased trolling arachnidsGrip [AG] at 11:26:21.

You breathe in. You breathe out. You let it go and you do not cry. 

She's still your friend, you tell yourself. And anyways you knew it would end like this. It always ends like this, with her saying I Just Can't Keep Doing This Anymore. By now you've learned to be fine with it, mostly. Kanaya is a better person than you in all possible worlds, and Rose is better for her in just as many, and you want her to be happy. You really, really do.

There's too much bad blood between the two of you now. Most of that is blood you spilled. That's what you do, after all- you ruin things, and you hurt people. That's what Spidermom told you, isn't it? You and Kanaya probably wouldn't have worked out anyways- she was right, as always. You let yourself grieve the love she bore you, the possibility that you'd kept hanging onto that things would go back to the way they'd been before; you grieve those long Alternian nights together, laughing and snarking and brushing hair and shooshing and being closer than any other moirails you knew, and you grieve the fact that nights like that will never happen again.

It's four perigees into the trip. She's your friend again, and you're still pale for her in the dumbest way, but it's over, and you're not hurting as much. You think this is what moving on feels like.

Across the room, Rose makes a joke, and Kanaya laughs. Your heart hurts a little, but less than it did before. She's happy, and that's what matters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i accidentally ended up including a ton of rosemary in this. whoops. by the way, no one writes red/pale rosemary which is dumb??? pale/red rosemary is adorable especially how concerned rose and kanaya get over one another. 
> 
> like. talking about their respective issues 2gether? helping each other calm down from nightmares? comforting one another about kanaya's mixed feelings on motherhood (i hc kanaya as having mixed feelings on troll motherhood because for so long it meant jadeblood traditions, according to which she never would have gotten to see the sun, and she would've been alone down there, and she would've had to cull innocent grubs for being less developped/mutated, but she really wants to be a mom in the human way in the new world they're building) and her guilt about murderstuck (she feels like she could've stopped it) and rose's mom feelings (worried about being like mom lalonde) and her doc scratch trauma. 
> 
> probably would've developed during the meteor early on when kanaya's dealing with the newfound experience of being a fucking rainbow drinker and not knowing what that means for her and rose helps her out by searching through old alternian texts to figure out what being a rainbow drinker entails. and later on kanaya reciprocates when rose is dealing with alcohol issues and withdrawal (addict's alchemy is basically canon to me lmao)
> 
> anyways. 
> 
> though vriska's mostly pale for kanaya she DOES have some flushed feelings for her, she just doesn't really know how to process them and her pale feelings for kanaya are more important to her than her red due to the fact that she's been pale for her for much longer and has a lot of fond memories with pale feelings attached to them.
> 
> i also feel like vriska's more vulnerable with kanaya than she is with most people tbh because of their past moirallegiance. she's probably more open with kanaya than she is with almost anyone (she's closest and most open with terezi re: most things. only thing she's not open about with terezi is her feelings for her bc vriska is dumb and gay)


	5. your mirrored self

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of all of the humans you meet, she's the one that is hardest to look at directly.

When you first take stock of the humans, you don't notice John Egbert, leader in shining blue, the way that most of them do. Your attention is not immediately drawn towards Dave Strider, coolkid extraordinaire, the way Terezi is. Not even Jade Harley captures your eye; at least, not at first. You and Kanaya are alike again; you look towards Rose Lalonde. 

You think it's for different reasons but you don't want to think about what Kanaya sees in Rose ( _and what she never saw in you_ , a voice that sounds suspiciously like your Spidermom whispers). What draws you to her is the way she carries herself.

Short, chubby Rose Lalonde, with her gently curling strands of blonde hair falling into her eyes, stands straight backed in a land of light and sweet rain and makes the decision to tear it all apart, and Tavros is the only one around to see you swoon. He won't tell, though. Tavros is too dumb to make any sense out of it.

You are immediately taken with her.

How could you not be? She's like you in so many ways. There's the Light Aspect side of it, but that is small in comparison to your other little similarities.

She disparages her mother and you understand her- your mother played games with your head, too, ones that hit you hard and left you reeling and unsure of whether she meant the things she said or not. She is wild and rough-edged, despite her smooth demeanor, and she talks big to avoid the fact that she's just as dirty and reckless as you are. She wants to rip this game apart, find meaning in its stitches and seams. 

You never speak to her. You don't know what you'd say if you did. She'd see right through you, probably, but you don't think you'd mind that much. You could turn the tables back on her just as easily. Every criticism she could dish out, you think, is one that applies to her as well. 

You and Rose Lalonde are two sides of the same coin. At least, that's what you think at first.

Kanaya messages her and laughs at her jokes and speaks in riddles with her and you have never seen her more entranced by a girl- not even, you think, bloodpusher aching, by you. She is kind to her fellow players in ways you never could've been- she is kind to Jade, who you hurt over and over again, steal from in order to prepare for a battle you know is coming.

(Logically you know that what you are doing to Jade in the name of your own safety is overkill. You don't need this much luck and importance and power. You could get by on your own without this much- if you just counted on your fellow players- but no. Your mother trained you to always be vigilant. You are, till the end, her child soldier.)

Her conversations with Dave are strange and teasing but they're not malicious- both of them come out of each one knowing the other cares for them. John says, she's my best friend, and you know that it is not without reason. 

Her mother dies and you watch her grieve and wonder why she cares so much because isn't she free now? The way you were? You mourned Spidermom- the only one who ever knew who you were, deep down, truly- but she cries at the sight of her mother's body and screams and invokes the dark names of the things beyond Derse, the things Prospitians whispered about at night or laughed in the day because nothing could truly be that vast and terrible. She mourns and tears the world apart and you think of what you did to mourn- shed a tear, wipe it away, and keep going- and feel like a bad daughter. Your lusus made you what you were, and you honored her in the only way you knew how.

But here is Rose Lalonde, grimdark, her hands tearing at the seams of reality, mirage tentacles flickering in and out around her. The session goes black, and you are thankful for it.

Over time, it changed, and here is the final proof. First you were similar in ways you could applaud- your aspect, your mother issues, your recklessness- but now it isn't that easy. She's better than you, plain and simple. She can make Kanaya laugh, she can love her without hurting her. Her friends don't hate her. She is more powerful and more vengeful than you ever were.

You focus on John and Jade after that and try to forget about Rose Lalonde. Of all of the humans you meet, she's the one that is hardest to look at directly, and you aren't going to look directly into the sun.

On the meteor, you aren't friends. She dances circles around you with her wit, and you wonder if she hates you. Kanaya certainly wouldn't endear her to you, what with how you've treated her (you don't know what it was that broke it between you but it must've been something that you did, it always is). You're the girl who won't let her drink her soporifics, the one who meddles in her affairs, and of course she can't see that you're trying to help in the only way you know how.

There's one day that almost bridges the gap between you. It's late in the morning and everyone else is in their recuperacoons and/or beds except for you. You woke from a daymare where Scratch and Spidermom were whispering in your ears and Terezi was standing over you, canesword in hand, blue stains along the handle, and you were bleeding from your chest, run through with all the precision of an execution. You can't sleep, and you want some cocoa, that absolutely fucking delicious human drink.

You catch her in the kitchen, alchemizing that ugly-tasting alcohol soporific and you yell at her, because that's the only way you know how to help someone- yelling till they fix themselves. And somehow it turns into something else as she screams back about how You're one to talk, Vriska.

Once upon a time, before the meteor, John spoke of how Rose loved to psychoanalyze people. You remember his words, blue on your husktop screen, "you really don't want to be on the receiving end of her psychobabble, vriska" and you hadn't really registered just how devastating it could be.

Rose Lalonde says things like "narcissistic" and "child abuse" and "trauma" and "poor coping skills" and "lack of socialization" and you don't know what most of those words mean but you know what she is trying to say which is: you are twice as fucked up as me. You are a thousand times worse than I am.

She's not wrong, though. You scream back unintelligibly- something about how dumb and stupid and wrong she is, you think? You end up smashing her glasses of soporific on the ground and she grabs you by the waist and hits you, hard, and you grapple for a grip on her, some way to get the upper hand and knock her back against the counter and she is snarling at you and suddenly you're kissing.

It's not soft. It's not sweet. It's hard and brutal and she bites down on her lip hard enough to make you bleed. You scrape your nails down her sides and through her buzzed hair, growl into her and try not to feel comforted.

When she breaks away she's crying, hard, and what she says comes out wobbly and mostly incoherent. Most of it is about her mother, and what she's turning into, and what am I, really, except the thing I swore I would never let myself become?

You try not to listen to it. You carry her back to the room, dump her at the doorstep and knock. When Kanaya answers, yawning and sleepy at first and then full of bewilderment and concern, you simply tell her you've got better things to be doing than babysitting her girlfriend, and you go back to your own room, the hot chocolate forgotten entirely. 

By nine PM the next night, Rose doesn't remember any of it. You tell yourself it's better that way, and dream of the sour bitter taste of alcoholic lips, mingled with human blood, for the next week. 


	6. your scourge & sister

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She is everything to you. That's not something you say lightly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're finally here guys!! the final chapter! i hope the sheer length makes up for its lateness (this one chapter is longer than the other 5 combined im screaming). tws for child murder, abuse, gore, the revenge cycle, transphobia, vriska in general
> 
> the plan for [s]: collide / the final battle is different in this fic bc i think canon collide failed to wrap up a lot of character arcs and this version is better imo:
> 
>   * jane takes rose's place in the condesce fight. she kills the condesce, reclaiming her agency
>   * rose fights bec noir & gets closure for her moms death. jade also fights bec noir; she isnt auspiticizing between pm and bec.
>   * jake & karkat fight lord english
>   * the felt is fought by nanna, jasprose, arquius, and dad crocker
> 

> 
> other than that, it's the same as the canonical collide flash; ie, vriska fights L.E., john roxy kanaya fight the condesce, etc etc.
> 
> edit as of april 29th 2019: i added a bit about vriska's transition due to a comment made by literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte touching on dysphoria and sudden transitioning.

You meet Terezi Pyrope when you are only a little older than three sweeps. After that, nothing is ever the same.

She's on the opposing FLARP team, and both of your partners end up betraying you. That's not acceptable. Your ex-partner calls you by your not-name. Even less acceptable. You behead your opponents with one roll of the dice and a flourish of the scimitar that comes up, and then there are two heads sitting in the sand of the beach, blinking up at you. The boy's eyes look at you with contempt even after death, and you can barely control the urge to step on his skull, feel the satisfying crunch of bone under your boot. You don't do it, though, because your image is most important.

Terezi Pyrope has already seen far too much of you, after only a couple of hours. You are not going to betray more of your vulnerabilities. 

But she is both gentle and ruthless, kind and unforgiving. She trolls you a couple days after and proposes an alliance. She doesn't mention the issue that hangs between the two of you- the name that's on the administerror databases, the one that you've shed like an old skin. Instead, she calls you by the name that's on the FLARP boards, and for that, you are grateful.

You contemplate the offer for a few hours, weighing the pros and cons. You're not especially fond of working with a team or a partner, but two player FLARP lends the opportunity for more culls and a more satisfied lusus. And Pyrope certainly seems to be competent; in the fight that had taken down Gorjek and Codakk, you'd seen her fighting style and been impressed. Her technique leans on evading attacks more than yours does, but that's fine. You need a bit of a stealthier partner anyways. There have been a couple lost FLARP matches where you'd been out maneuvered due to your propensity to barge right in, and your Spidermom is only getting hungrier by the perigee. 

GC: SO WH4T'LL 1T B3, M4D4M3 M4RQU1S3?

In the end, it's a no-brainer. You lean forward into your keyboard, grinning at her teal bravado, and accept.

AG: Seems we have ourselves a deal, Neophyte!

* * *

She learns about your lusus by accident, mostly.

The two of you are at your hive planning a new FLARP campaign when your Spidermom starts snapping at you in your head, screaming insults and demands. She's hungry again, and when she's hungry she's always unbearable.

Terezi notices the way you wince and flinch and go blank at things that she can't hear, though. She's perceptive like that. 

"VR1SK4?" She asks, curious. Her voice is gentle. Terezi always knows when to tease and prod and push with you and when to be gentle. It's more than you deserve. "4R3 YOU 4LR1GHT?"

Her hand comes up to rest on your shoulder and you startle at the touch. It's been so long since someone touched you in a way that didn't mean  _hurt._ Not since -

You do not think of Miriel.

"It's cool, Pyrope," you say, plastering on your patented Marquise Spinneret Mindfang smirk™. "I just have to t8ke care of something! Just hold tight for a 8it, okay, amuse yourself 8y having trials with my posters or whatever it is th8t you legislacer8tors-in-training do in your sp8re time. Just- d8n't leave my room, okay?"

Her eyes narrow, but she nods, and you smile and let yourself out of your room and begin the long walk down the stairs. They're so long and steep and not for the first time do you wish that you'd been less extravagant when you had your hive built. The long walks of trepidation and Her, in your head, saying awful things, are agonizing.

You hate it. You hate her. You'd built it like this because you'd hoped that the separation would keep some small parts of you clean from her. But it didn't work, and you were stupid for thinking it would. Distance means nothing when she can cut her way into your mind.

You store the bodies from old FLARP battles in your hive's big freezer. It keeps the bodies fresh enough that She doesn't complain, and the freezer's in the basement, a small cave that she can't get into. You used to dump the bodies in her web, but she ate fast, with no regard for how hard it was for you to procure them. She didn't care that the bodies needed to last the two of you a long time- in her eight eyes, it wasn't her job to care about the hows or the whys of getting food. That was up to you.

Neither could you store them in your sylladex. Or, well, you could- it'd stop them from rotting & decomposing, since sylladexes are airtight- but you hate looking in your sylladex to find something and seeing your victims. You hate going places and always having them with you. You hate looking at what you've done- the gore, the blood, their faces, frozen in their death screams. You should be used to it by now- Mindfang wouldn't care, Mindfang would string up her victims along the sails or on the side of her ship so that all who passed could see what became of those who crossed her- but you're not as strong as Mindfang. You're not sure you'll ever be used to seeing it.

So you make your way over to the freezer and open the big lid, wincing at the sight of limbs and torsos and heads lying everywhere. You captchalogue the torso of that big purpleblood you culled in last week's FLARP game and shove the lid shut, making your way over to the open canyon where your lusus spins her web. 

She's there, of course, drooling pale blue spit everywhere. There are splotches of old blood that's crusted around her face and neck, bits of red and yellow and green and some blue. She can't even clean up after herself once she eats, doesn't bother to. In your head she's buzzing around, droning, a steady stream of the stuff she usually calls you- insults and demands and digs at you that you've long since learned to tune out.

"C'mon, you shitty f8cking- just, like, calm down a s8cond, I've got a f8cking c8rpse r8ght here-" you mutter, fumbling at your sylladex, and you decaptchalogue the body, dropping it into the abyssal canyon below you where your lusus lives, into your lusus's open, slavering mouth.

You don't watch it fall- you're not that masochistic.

Instead, you turn to leave, to escape this, to go back to roleplaying with Terezi Pyrope and listening to her lovely hyena laugh, to forget, even if only for a few hours, the burden on your shoulders. The heavy responsibility of who you have to be for your lusus. Who you have to become. You turn, and instead of walking out you come face-to-face with Terezi Pyrope, standing in the door.

You freeze for a moment, a thousand thoughts racing through your head ( _did she see it did she see what I did did she see Her oh gog oh fuck oh no)_ before rushing forward and pulling her out of the way. Your lusus is preoccupied with her meal but if she sees Terezi you don't know  _what_ she'll do. Terezi is wide-eyed and open-mouthed staring up at you and you hate it, you hate it, you hate it.

"VR1SK4-" she starts, but you interrupt her by taking her by the arm and positively pulling her up the stairs, refusing to allow her to get a word in edgewise.

"D8n't s8y it, Terezi," you hiss through gritted teeth, the hand not pulling her by the arm clenched into a fist by your side. "Just- d8n't."

And Terezi, blessing that she is, doesn't say a word.

Once you're back in your room and the door is closed behind you, only then do you let go of her arm. You flop back onto your couch and cover your face with your hands and groan. 

"I told you to stay put," you say, eyes squeezed shut. You don't want to look at her when she spits at you in disgust at what an awful person you are, or when she tries to fucking pity you and not in the romantic way, or when she laughs at you. You don't know which reaction is worse. 

"YOU W3R3 4CT1NG W31RD, VR1SK4!" Terezi replies. "1 H4D PROB4BL3 C4US3 TO 1NV3ST1G4T3." 

You can practically hear the contrariness in her voice. Of course; you should've guessed that she'd try and investigate. She's Terezi Pyrope, and Terezi has never left a mystery unexamined. That's not the kind of person she is. Mentally, you scold yourself for acting so gogdamn weird. You should've known that the slightest hint of something being off would have roused her curiosity. 

Softer, she continues. "W4S TH4T R34LLY YOUR LUSUS?"

 Your bloodpusher clenches. On the couch, you lie very very still, and when you answer your voice comes out as almost a whisper. "Yeah."

"4ND SH3 34TS..."

"Yeah."

"TH4T'S WH4T YOU'V3 B33N DO1NG W1TH TH3 BOD13S?"

"Yeah."

She doesn't say anything for a long while, and you squeeze your eyes shut so hard that it almost hurts, the entirety of your body curled into tension, hoping that she'll make this easier than it could be. 

But the rebuke, the laughter, the disgustingly platonic pity never comes. Instead you feel the springs of the couch creak as she sits next to you, shifting her weight a little before she says, "MY LUSUS 1S 4N 3GG."

The admission comes out of nowhere. It is so bewilderingly far out of left field that you have to take a couple of minutes to register what she's just said, and then another couple for it to really sink in and then another for you to frantically reexamine the conversation in order to figure out what the hell she's talking about and come up with nothing. All that having been done you finally end up whispering, "What the fuck?"

"NO, R34LLY!" Terezi's voice is sage and impressively calm, as if you're talking about a particularly bewildering plot twist in a movie you've just seen instead of whatever the hell it is that your conversation's turned into. "SH3'S 4 DR4GON LUSUS 3GG, 4ND SH3 COMMUN1C4T3S TO M3 V14 H3R M1ND FROM 1NS1D3 H3R SH3LL SOM3T1M3S. 1T'S PR3TTY B4D4SS! BUT 1T 4LSO K1ND OF SUCKS, YOU KNOW? K4RK4T V4NT4S- H3'S 4 FR13ND OF M1N3, 1 DON'T TH1NK YOU KNOW H1M- H3 ONC3 S3NT M3 TH1S F33L GOOD MOV13 WH3N 1 W4S F33L1NG DOWN. 1T W4S C4LL3D SOM3TH1NG L1K3 '1N WH1CH 4 SH33PDOG LUSUS WHOS3 CH4RG3 H4S R3C3NTLY B33N CULL3D COM3S 4CROSS 4 GRUB W1TH 4 BLOOD MUT4T1ON WHO H4S NO LUSUS 4ND T4K3S 1T 1N TO R3PL4C3 TH3 HOL3 1N H3R BLOODPUSH3R L3FT 3MPTY 4FT3R TH3 CULL1NG OF H3R BRONZ3BLOOD3D CH4RG3. H4V3 YOU H34RD OF 1T?"

"Uhhhhhhhh, yeah," you say automatically. You do remember someone on one of the forums you browse regularly who was complaining about the fact that it'd been banned for 'hemotreasonous messages'. "Wasn't it 8anned, though?" 

"Y34H, BUT K4RK4T DO3SN'T R34LLY C4R3 4BOUT STUFF L1K3 TH4T. 4NYW4YS, H3 THOUGHT 1T'D CH33R M3 UP, R1GHT? SO 1 W4TCH3D 1T 4ND 1T JUST M4D3 M3 R34LLY UPS3T, 1NST34D. L1K3, 1'M NOT SUR3 1F MY LUSUS W1LL 3V3R H4TCH, 4ND 1F SH3 DO3SN'T 1'M N3V3R GO1NG TO G3T TH4T STUFF, YOU KNOW? M4YB3 1T'S D1FF3R3NT. BUT 1'M 1N NO PL4C3 TO JUDG3 YOU FOR YOUR LUSUS."

You feel your eyes water a little and wipe them furiously with the back of your arm before forcing yourself to smile up at Terezi. "Really? A dr8gon lusus? We really are Redglare and Mindf8ng incarn8, Pyrope!" 

She doesn't press the issue. You love her a little for that.

After that, she starts helping you carry the bodies to your hive and doesn't press or pry when you tremble looking down at your lusus. Terezi Pyrope is, if anything, graced with an incredible tact. 

* * *

She is your first and best friend. There is no one like Terezi Pyrope, no one. She is sharp and witty and always willing to tease. She sees the dirtier parts of you, the parts that you are afraid to show to others, the way you kill your opponents without anything more than a tiny little flicker of meaningless remorse, and accepts them. She makes you want to be a better person-she takes it for granted that you don't kill unless they cheat, or have otherwise earned it. She speaks as though you can be good, as though you don't have your lusus constantly whispering her awful secrets in your head.

You know that you're not who she thinks you are, but she inspires you to try to be.

She is not like you- she is good, for one thing, fair and just and kind- but that's okay. You think maybe that she likes being your friend, having you by her side, someone that she can kill with. Someone who will accept all of the dirtier parts of her too. 

Terezi Pyrope is your best friend. She is the one who proposes the name  _Scourge Sisters_ , and you think of what that means. Scourge, to defeat, to be your enemy's bane. And sisters, for two girl trolls who are unusually close, almost moirails; but also, in more archaic terms, two girls sharing the burden of a lusus. You look at her and her sharktooth smile and say yes. 

She is everything to you. That's not something you say lightly.

* * *

Of course it ends poorly. It always does. You push Tavros off a cliff and they refuse to see what you're trying to do; make him stronger, make him into the troll he's supposed to be. You want to help him, but the world has taught you that teachings are a painful thing. You want him to survive, be someone who can help you the way no one else would. So you push him off and he doesn't fly.

You'd thought he'd fly. All the stories said the Summoner's descendant would fly like him.

Aradia raises your ghosts around you and you crumple and scream and beg and plead and break. You grab onto the first suggestion and wield it like a sword. Sollux Captor will never forgive you for the way you weaponized his red-blue rage, and Aradia's body breaks and crunches under the gravel ruins of her hive. She rises, but you hadn't known that would happen. It was meant to be permanent. 

Terezi trolls you and promises revenge. She begs you to say something that will stay her hand but there's nothing left in your mouth except empty apologies. She knows this, too. She has always been the one who knows you best, despite how much you wanted to hide the worst parts of you from her.

She retaliates, of course. That's to be expected. This is Terezi Pyrope, and you have never underestimated her. She takes your arm and your eye and you lie there in your own cold blue blood trying not to cry. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. Even more so because it's Terezi behind the pain.

You've gone too far this time and now you're back to where you always end up- alone, bleeding, reminded of what you are. The spider in your basement whispers insults in your head and it is far too easy to believe them. 

Okay, you tell yourself, full of rage and anger and stuck in the role that they've made for you, the role that you have always known you were meant to pay. They want a monster, right? You'll give them a monster.

Tavros is so easy to bend into compliance. His mind folds and smooths under your hands, and you seize a hold of Terezi's lusus and guide her into the light of Alternian day.

You can feel the moment it works- her lusus's mind jerks away from yours with horror as it realizes what you're doing, but it's too late. You can hear the scream in the dragon's ears, and your work is done. Terezi is blind, or maybe dead, and you have never hated yourself more than you do in that moment.

The walk to Equius's hive is full of regret and self hatred and half-assed justifications. You walk in the door and he can see the pain on your face regardless of how much you laugh and giggle and insult him, try to distract him. Equius is a coward and a pervert and you hate him, but he has eyes with which to see, and you don't have enough energy in you to hide the way you're cracking at the edges.

She isn't holding you back anymore. Finally, she has seen the truth of you, plumbed the very blackness of the dark abyss in your heart, and she has flinched from it. Who would not? You're free, now, to do as you wish- to burn down your castle and listen to your mother screaming in the basement, to guillotine her in the caverns, to snap off each of Spidermom's legs until she's begging. The way your victims begged for mercy. 

Terezi Pyrope is through with you. For the first time since the death of your first moirail, you feel the breaking of your bitter brittle heart.

* * *

In the Game, the two of you avoid each other. She has her own personal quest to surmount, and you have yours. She doesn't troll you, she doesn't speak to you, she slips through your slim fingers like a wisp of sand on the beaches where you used to play with Eridan. 

You tell yourself it's all right. You need no one. Tavros zooms across your planet and you laugh, free for a little while to ignore all your burdens- your spidersprite, your quest, the tasks assigned to you- and simply enjoy the feel of the wind in your hair, the gentle light on your skin.

Aradia shows up and you know what is going to happen; she beats you, bruises you, and you let it happen, let the hurting take you. It is just, you suppose, what she is doing, and you hate Tavros a little for stopping her. 

He carries you to your quest bed at your direction and places you upon the slab of rock. His hands are so gentle, and you know that this is the moment of truth: has it worked, have you succeeded at what you've worked at for so long, is this some small accolade to your name even if you are mostly a failure. 

You beg him to kill you, write words in your own blood with his hands, screaming internally, the pain racking you with terror and horror and fear, your mouth bloody with internal injuries. In your stomach you can hear your own organs squelching as they fail you, and Tavros stands in front of you with that black and white lance, brandished above you.

It's up to him. You relinquish your grip on his mind, so proud, so much trust in this boy that is supposed to be yours, your beloved boy who tries to kiss you as you bleed. You want him to be strong.

You'd never say it out loud, but you do love him- in your own strange, fucked up way. It's not the same way that you'd love anyone else, not the way that your heart burned with desire for Aradia, not the way you shivered with comfort and the feeling of safety under Kanaya's hands. It is nowhere near the complicated mess of hooked wires around your bloodpusher that constitutes how you feel on Terezi. It is not romantic, not the way it's supposed to feel- you dropped him from your hands after kissing him hard on the mouth, disappointment curdling your chest, feeling broken, like Mindfang's greatest failure of a descendant- but it is still love, the way you shape him and try to protect him from everything but yourself.

Your exiled Queen tells you  _just do it yourself_ but despite everything- despite the way he sniffles and trembles and stutters, despite the way you have hurt him- you trust him. You trust Tavros, and you tell him to kill you quickly. 

He doesn't do it. 

You sob and cry and beg him, scream DO IT YO8 COW8RD K8LL ME K8LL M8 and he doesn't do it. He leaves you, alone, bleeding and afraid and full of pain unlike any you've ever known, full of hatred and grief and betrayal and self-loathing, and at last you realize that nothing you have done to him worked. All you did was mess him up, and this is what's left. You fucked him up and fucked him over and now you're paying for it.

Dying is slower than you thought it would be. Ceruleans have quite a lot of blood, after all. You think you pass out after the sixth pint of it, but you can't be sure.

When you rise from the ashes, your body clean and untouched by blood despite the pools of blue that surround you, your body is different. A pair of mammary sacks sit upon your previously flat breastbone; the hard line of your jaw is turned soft, the space above your lip goes smooth, untouched by stubble. Your broad shoulders are thinner, your hips narrow. You know that if you looked in a mirror you would see a black mouth that does not smudge with lipstick.

You hadn't known that this cheat would give you the body you only owned in your dreams, the one that you only saw clad in gold. You are orange-yellow with happiness. In your mind something unlocks, power flowing through you. Luck and possibility stretches out in your fingers. The world feels wide, ready, waiting to be cracked open in your hands. It is glorious, it is lovely, and you feel alive and whole again.

There are other things left to do; your journey is not yet over. Tavros falls behind you, all your concerns and hopes for him left in the dust as he sleeps on Prospit. You conquer LOMAT, run wild across the session, slash and hack your way through black carapacian armies, feel the burn in your arms. You lose yourself in this game, because in the end that's all it is: a game. All your games have had high stakes anyways. This is nothing new.

The Black King's body is hard and dark and it splits under the weight of your grip on Mindfang's scimitar. You stand above it in its death throes, grinning, red blood covering your face and hands and body. For once this is a kill you can be proud of, and you are ready to step into this new world, to walk through an open door into a world that you can shape as you wish-

It is all snatched away from you in the blink of an eye, and you hate yourself for thinking you ever could have won.

* * *

John Egbert draws you close. He is so strong, so sure, so bright that you can't help following him, urging him on and helping him win. You have learned from your failure with Tavros! With John you are gentler, kinder, less punishing. You are trying to help him, after all. 

He would never hurt someone. He has never had to hurt someone, of course, so perhaps that's a moot point; still, you follow him, marvel in his dedication, his small acts of kindness. Hats and salamanders and gifts- John gives little acts of kindness away without noticing, without remarking upon them. He is both heroic and good and you feel the combined weight of both hit you hard. 

There are flirting comments, and gentle questions, and you know that John is never going to love you. He doesn't know you, of course, and he never will, he's  _human._ John will never know the weight on your shoulders, the reverb of your mother's voice, the taste of blood in your mouth from the splashback of a swordswing. He only knows your cerulean text, your eight-eye emojis, your jokes and guides. He doesn't know you.

Still. Here is a way to lose yourself again, to be another person, to create a new self out of the more tattered bits of you. This is no Mindfang persona, all ruthless cruelty and laughs and large feathered hats; this is instead the more ragged bits, the kindness you have left to muster, the love for games and banter. You have always been a fantastic FLARPer; not just for the way your blade cuts through wind and then through skin and cartilage, muscle and bone grit turned into dust by its edge, but also for the way you made people believe in the stories you told. The way you made yourself believe in it. 

In this time you also struggle with your own body. It is new, and frightening, and you have wanted it for so long but sometimes you can't entirely believe this belongs to you- sometimes you look at yourself in the mirror and flinch. Who is this girl, who looks like you and nothing like you- whose jawline is soft with fat, who never needs to apply lipstick, who can't sleep on her stomach? You struggle, for days, trying to find a balance between sleeping on your front and waking up sore, and sleeping on your back and trapping your wings. For perigees after you instinctively make sure not to smudge your lipstick before remembering you don't wear it anymore. You love your new body, but it is strange, and some days you wish the changes had happened slower. 

John sends you links to Nicolas Cage scenes and you absorb every inch of his love for it. You love this boy, or maybe you love what he represents- goodness, heroism. You have been denied goodness and there is no reclaiming it, not with the crack of Tavros's spine in your ears, Aradia's blood on your hands, Terezi's useless red eyes meeting yours every time you look at her. But you can be heroic, still. That is not yet out of reach. You'll die for your teammates if necessary, if only for the way you might be redeemed in their sight. 

Terezi kills John, leads him astray, sends him a shortcut to Typheus and dooms him. It's funny, in a way, that she does this to you- her motives are unclear to you. You know it's probably to create Davesprite, or because she's fascinated with the concept of timelines, or maybe just because she wanted to know that she could do it- but sometimes, when it's late in the morning and you're delirious from daymares, you can pretend she was jealous of him, even though there's no way Terezi Pyrope could possibly feel threatened by your relationship with John Egbert, of all people. 

You are jealous of Dave, though. You are well aware that it is dumb, and that the only thing that has broken your relationship with Terezi is your own failures, but that's hard to remember when Terezi laughs her hyena cackle when she's trolling him. Red text spills across the glow of her monitor, and you know it would be so easy to snuff him out, to pluck the life from him, to cut him open, but you don't.

There were moments of contemplation, a point where you almost did it- but you saw Terezi hunched over her monitor once, a boy weeping red blasphemy after his death, her useless eyes wet with grief. You would not do this to her. Enough of her teal tears were shed because of you, and you'd be dooming yourself also, the whole timeline brought down to death because of a pique of jealousy. 

You don't kill Dave Strider, and you don't speak to Terezi Pyrope, and you cut off the ugly parts of yourself for John Egbert's friendship. This is what it means to be good.

* * *

Standing on the roof of this forsaken meteor before your sister, there is silence. It is only a lull before a death, the moment before a choice that means the end of one story and the beginning of another. 

In one timeline, she can't bear to put the sword between your shoulders. Perhaps she still holds some love for you, or maybe it's just the lump of nostalgia in her bloodpusher, the longing for a better time, where your fights didn't end with death between you- or at least, deaths that didn't matter in the end, rusties and browns and mustards who cheated or pissed you off. She lets you go, bitter burning in her throat, and you fly with blue pixie dust drifting behind you, a road paved with your mistakes. 

You are outsmarted- you are thirteen and he is much, much older, some immortal god-beast of another world that is both wilder and gentler, fused with an adult carapacian. He follows your trail as the realization hits you, suddenly aware of how stupid you are, and when he returns he is holding two bodies under his arms.

Karkat, red with his own blood, which you laugh at- what a sad little secret that is, discovered in death! The secret makes sense of him now, in a way it didn't before- even after his body stops moving, his mouth spills out heresy. And Terezi, your scourge and sister, your partner in crime, your worst enemy and best friend. Her dumb legislacerator's outfit is torn at the seams, and there are ugly teal bite marks on her arms. Noir shakes his head and droplets of his own disgusting blood fly everywhere- she fought him, she fought back and died at his hands, and you could not be more filled with rage and hurt and self-hatred.

He drops them at your feet like a dog with a bone, displaying them proudly, and you scream and pull at the terrible emptiness of the blackness of Paradox Space, until all the luck and light of the worlds is burnt up to the sheer power of your righteous rage inside of you. 

In the end he is stubborn and difficult to kill, but you are the Thief of Light and the Marquise reincarnate and every atom in you is made of diamond-hard resolve. He is only half a god, a bastard child of your own tricks and prototypes, and you are pureblooded. Ichorous, every inch of you. His blood flows easily enough.

After he is dead, you drop your blade and you collapse to the ground. You crawl to her, hold her, kiss her forehead gently and rock her back and forth the way lusii do for their wrigglers, as if it will bring her peace. She's dead, of course, but you are broken, alone, a would-have-been hero with everything you'd fought for slowly going cold and stiff in your hands.

This is just another timeline waiting to shatter.

In the other timeline she kills you. Despite knowing that she'd do it, her warning ringing clear in her mouth and your eyes, you can't help the little gasp that escapes you when you feel her sword bury itself to the hilt in your flesh. The slick burning slide of the cold blade through your lungs and breastbone and upper spine still hits you like a brick to the face, and you cough as you try to right yourself, stumble, lungs pierced, fall to the ground. Your chin is wet with the coughed blue, staining your teeth.

You'd thought your death on your quest bed was painful, but this is agonizing, every second of waiting for the tick of the clock that meant JUST, and it is lonely, and every moment of it hurts.

Your end is this: a cold canesword slowly sliding out of you as she pulls it from your body, the drip of your blood on the blade, one hand on your shoulder and one on your hip as she turns you over to lie on her knee. The gentle curve of her mouth as she holds you, tears trembling in her piteous gaze, fingers gentle in your hair, the flat of her fingernail against that chitinous base of your left horn.

In death you go on to wander dreambubbles- you amass an army and learn to be heroic, find a weapon. The army is then immediately lost when Aranea, traitorous bitch that she is, leaves the lot of you behind. Meenah takes you in and teaches you how to be good, how to stop caring and instead find a way to be, if not happy, content with yourself. How to be at peace in a way you have never been before. 

She loves you, and she leaves you for another version of you. In the end she tells you that she couldn't take her own lesson, and you wander alone. Everything that you have ever done has failed, fallen ashy through your fingertips, and so you look for  _something_ , for an end, for a missed part of your soul.

The path leads you to Terezi Pyrope, the way it always does, and you hold her under the sky as the world breaks apart.

But in this timeline, in the most important one, John Egbert saves you. And more importantly, Terezi Pyrope spares you.

After, she takes the room next to yours. There are apologies- many, many apologies, so many that it would take hours to list them all off- but she looks into your eyes and despite the fact that she can't see you, her gaze pierces through every carefully-cobbled piece of armor you've built for yourself.

She forgives you. You don't understand why, but you've long since learned not to question good things. She takes you back, and you ignore the voice in your head that says you don't deserve it- because you don't, but that's not important. What's important is that Terezi Pyrope is no longer your scourge, but your sister.

* * *

After that, it is better. This is not to say that it is perfect, because it is not perfect. Neither of you have ever been perfect, and even less so when the two of you are together. But you think the two of you are better together than you would have been alone. 

Gamzee approaches her in the hallway, kismesis hatred burning in him and your hands tighten and clench around empty space, searching for a weapon. It is instinctual, and the flash of anger burning brightly within you begs to be fed- but you are better now, not so selfish. You take a step back even though it pains you and spread your arms so that Terezi can see, a silent gesture of _I'm here, and I'll be your backup, if you need it_. Whether she accepts or not is up to her.

Still, relief floods your tensed muscles when she rejects him. And maybe you take a little too much pleasure in knocking that asshole clown on his back. Maybe you relish in the way that Terezi throws an arm around your shoulders and laughs with you, toss a glance over your shoulder to smirk at him, but you have never claimed to be perfect. There are some parts of you that cannot be tamed, and one of them is the wild, touch-desperate creature in you that survives off Terezi's affection. 

These sweeps you learn how to love every bit of her, not just the parts she pieces together into the shell of her armor, not just the parts that she is able to accept within herself. You laugh at her jokes and her puns, cheer her on when she spars with Rose in the practice-strifing rooms you set up for training, and complain good-naturedly when she eats whole packets of red chalk in front of you, or darts forward to lick something that really should not be licked. These are things that you have done since the beginning of your friendship, and you fall back into them as easy as breathing, as if you'd never stopped.

But some of this is new, too. She wakes panting from daymares and you are there, next to her, soothing, whispering, letting her bury her face in your shoulder and take deep breaths through her nose, to prove you're still here. In dreambubbles Aranea offers to fix her sight, and you come at her spitting and clawing before you can stop yourself, tearing at this version of your ancestor without even thinking. Afterwards, you tell Terezi that there is nothing about her that needs to be fixed. When she wonders if she was even meant to make it this far, you are there to tell her that she is more powerful than she thinks she is. 

It goes both ways, of course- Terezi is there when you have your own, terrible daymares, when the rush of self-hatred burns through you. She is a presence at your back when you snap at Karkat, calming and forbidding, reminding you that you can be better than this. She laughs at your bad puns, teases you when you slip up in strife training, chimes in eagerly when you make plans for meteor explorations together. You trust her enough to let her see you when you are at your most vulnerable.

She asks you to be her moirail, and you accept, grin and ruffle her hair. The others have long since thought the two of you were a pale couple already, so when you tell them, the biggest reaction is Karkat rolling his eyes and saying "FUCKING NO SHIT, TROLL SHERLOCK," which is probably as close to approval as you're going to get from him.

What they don't know is that she is more than that to you. Quadrants, you think, can't contain the sheer breadth of what Terezi Pyrope makes you feel. They weren't designed with the knowledge that a girl like this could exist. 

It is black, bits of it, and that part of it is reassuring. You know how to be black for someone, you have _felt_ black for people before, and you recognize it: the way she gets in your face sometimes and argues with you about tactics, her gaze narrowing at you when you say something particularly mean to someone, the infuriating way that she looks at you before she does something stupid, as if she's daring you to tell her _no._ The two of you grappling during spars, your faces separated by the shine of your blades, each a mirror of the other, the panting of breath as you fight for the upper hand. You know how to be black for Terezi Pyrope.

And pale, too, that comes to you with surprising ease. You think you have been pale for Terezi Pyrope without knowing it for a long time. You offer yourself up to the stormy parts of her, her jagged edges and weeping sides. You hold her, soothe her, feel the burn of protectiveness in your bloodpusher, the urge to bare your teeth for her. You are her first and most precious armor, a shield from all that would hurt her, and she is yours- you feel it in the way her hand tightens around your arm when Karkat makes a particularily snotty remark about you, in the way she pets your hair after daymares. You'd kill Aranea Serket before you let her lay a finger on Terezi again. After Terezi woke from a daymare where she'd said yes to Gamzee when he asked her to be his kismesis, you figured out what his favorite hiding spots in the vents were and promptly made sure to never go near them again. 

But the flush of it, that is new. It has never been like this before- not in that brief flirtation with Aradia, and not in your desperate relationship with Tavros. You wonder how you could have ever thought that those were the same kind of thing- you have never felt this burning in your chest before.

Here is something entirely new and frightening: Terezi falling asleep halfway through movie night, her face nestled against your chest. Looking at her feels like being hit with a brick, like watching someone pull out your intestines in front of you, like a suckerpunch to the underside of your chest. In the flickering light of the laptop you can see all her little scars, the silver glimmering remnants of long ago battles. You look at her and suddenly you can't breathe for the weight of sudden, welling affection that floods every inch of you. 

You would kneel for Terezi Pyrope, let her run you through a thousand times with her canesword, talk to Doc Scratch again, douse yourself in gasoline and light the match yourself if it meant she would never be hurt again. She looks at you and despite every lesson you've learned, every whispering murmur of the memory of your Spidermom in your ear, you are laid bare for her. 

You do not speak of your realization, because she doesn't need to know. You are not the kind of girl that is meant to be loved by others, let alone Terezi Pyrope. You've learned that, haven't you? Aradia burned hot with black hatred for you. Doc Scratch used you and left you behind. You tried, for Kanaya, but you were never good enough; Rose knew that, saw right through you. The only thing you're good for is hatred. 

So you hold your secret close to your chest.

* * *

But you have never been good at keeping secrets.

As the meteor hurtles its way towards your final battle, something seems to strain between the two of you- pulled taut and tense by something you don't entirely understand, and you are afraid that you have done something wrong, fucked up in that way that only you can, ruined this last good thing you can hold on to.

So you do what you do best- absolutely nothing. You pretend nothing's wrong and ignore the sickness in your gut when Terezi purses her lips and looks away from you, lines tightening around her eyes. 

Unfortunately, none of your problems have ever been solved through ignoring it, and the same is true in this case. It all breaks apart at the last strategy meeting on the meteor, where you go over the plan and the enemies and the teams that you'll face.

"First, we'll have to deal with Rose's teenage human 'mom' 8eing stuck in Condy's Derse 8ase,", you explain, tapping the large whiteboard covered in Dave's... colorful illustrations of the plan. Mentally, you make a note to never appoint Dave to draw up your plans again. "Now, Rose has informed us that her Seer powers forsee this particular gam8it having a fortuitous outcome, 8ut I want to 8e sure that this is the case-"

Across the room, Dave leans forward and makes eye contact- or, well, shades contact with you, and you suppress a groan as you prepare yourself for this argument again.

"vriska i don't mean to sound like a buzzkill but we've all heard this plan a thousand times, can we talk about whats happening after we raid sea hitlers house?"

You want to go on your oft-recited spiel about how you can't make a decision or a plan about what happens after the raid until after the raid itself is over- there are too many variables, too many things that could change or go wrong between now and then- but the rest of the table is eyeing you with unconcealed curiosity, and you and Terezi have talked about this before. You do have the rudimentary beginnings of a plan. If things go wrong you can always adjust it.

"It's still a work-in-progress, I have to say that first," you relent, and Dave pumps his fist in victory. At his side, Karkat shouts "FINALLY!" Rose, for her part, simply smiles enigmatically- you had consulted with her on this, attempted to corroborate your sources, and you suspect she knows just as much as you do. Next to her, Kanaya beams brilliantly up at you, a gesture which, despite everything, still makes your cheeks flush.

There is a flash of some undiscernable emotion across Terezi's face, but it is gone in an instant, far too quick for you to get a hint of what's wrong. She stares up at you instead, her face uncharacteristically blank, and you fumble for a moment before you continue speaking.

"We've got, what, five opponents up against us at last count?" you ask Rose, tearing your gaze from Terezi's with some effort, and she nods. You turn to the board and start wiping off Dave's drawings, ignoring his protests ("vriska those were priceless works of art they were strider originals how could you do this") as you sketch a face with a pair of long, curved horns shaped like the Peixes hatchsign. Beside it you draw an approximation of Dog Jack, Lord Jack, and Robo Jack, and finally, add Lord English's ugly mug to the lineup.

"There's the Sea 8itch herself, o8viously," you ramble as you draw, "and Lord Jack- that's the weird screaming cue8all dude from the Alpha session. Then there's the Jack from our session, the Ro8o Jack- Karkat, remem8er him?"

"NO, VRISKA, I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THE FIRST PERSON THAT I EVER MET WHO SHARED MY BLOOD COLOR AND MADE ME FEEL LIKE I WASN'T A FREAK OF NATURE FOR MY PLACE ON THE HEMOSPECTRUM. WHO THE FUCK IS THAT GUY?"

Dave frowns at you and you wince. Evidently that was a sore spot- honestly you'd forgotten that it had even happened. Better fix your mistake!

"Whoops, sorry Karkat, forgot that ever happened!"

Perfect.

"Anyways, we've also got Dog Jack, resident evil murderous devil 8east, and the Mega Douche8ag himself, Lord English." 

You pause for a moment to let your words sink in before you continue. "All of these are important adversaries, but o8viously some of them are more crucial than others. Lord English is our first priority, followed by the Condesce and the Jacks, but all of them will need to 8e taken care of. The Alpha kids will want to fight, too, and we might lose people in the raid, but we do want to have a look at what these teams will look like, so this is official sign ups for our 8ig 'final 8attle', if you will."

"Now! For our first opponent, we're going to take a good look at the Condesce. She's pro8a8ly, aside from Lord English, the most powerful opponent that we'll have to face. She's spent centuries upgrading her a8ilities which now include 8OTH kinds of telekinesis. The simpler variety more common to rust8loods, and the nasty kind which some mustard8loods have, the eye laser kind. If that weren't enough, she has a mix of telepathic a8ilities too, like mine, plus the animal communion of 8rown8loods. This means she can hijack animals AND trolls. Humans I'm guessing are still off limits to her influence, so we're safe there. It's also possi8le that the Condesce may have some sway over the prospitian and one of the Jacks 8ecause of their part-dog n8ture too, 8ut I don't know how much. This is why taking on the Condesce has to 8e a HUGE PRIORITY! Try to kill or disa8le her as quickly as possi8le, or at least keep her OCCUPIED! Throw everything you have at her. Just keep her 8usy!"

"When it comes to killing her, I don't have much to advise. There's no intel on her weaknesses or anything like that. In fact, I'd 8et she doesnt have any. Like any powerful endgame 8oss, you just have to keep hammering away at her until she's dead." 

Your spiel completed, you pause and take in the faces of your meteor crew - for dramatic emphasis, obviously- before stepping back and gesturing towards the board with a flourish of your arm. "With that in mind, who wants to take on the Sea 8itch?"

Surprisingly enough, it is Kanaya who raises her hand. Normally she spends these meetings making snarky little quips about you and your leadership or holding Rose's hand and whispering barely-concealed jokes into Rose's ear as Rose snorts and tries to maintain a straight face. But now she is solemn in her anger, her eyes flinty.

"We Saw What Life Could Have Been Like For Our Race," she says without preamble, speaking before you can ask her why. She can read the question in your eyes. "We Saw Beforus In Our Dreambubbles. The Condesce Doomed Us All To This; To Bigotry And To Culling And To The Utter Hoofbeast Shit That Was The Hemocaste. For That She Must Pay. Preferably By Means Of My Chainsaw, But I Am Not Picky."

"Wow, Kanaya! That was really, um, passion8te!"  you add loudly in the silence that's left after Kanaya is finished and it's clear she has nothing more to say. "And I will definitely put you down for the reserve team, but unfortun8tely, you can't join the "Let's Kill The Fish 8itch" clu8 yet."

Kanaya's eye twitches. You take a little step backwards. "And Why Is That?"

You steel yourself. Sometimes you forget how scary Kanaya is when she wants to be; it's easy to forget that the slightly sarcastic and snarky girl who cares about every single one of her friends is also the one who sliced Eridan in half with a revving chainsaw and has made repeated threats to kill Gamzee when he so much as looks at one of you wrong. Right now, though, you can vividly remember the way she punched you hard in the cheek and the way she bit your mouth when she kissed you.

"There's another critical role which you- and Karkat, too, actually- specifically need to play first," you tell her, and your voice is calm and clear, because you're Vriska Serket, and you're not afraid of anyone or anything. "We can't risk losing you in 8attle until it's complete."

Kanaya's eyes narrow, and her skin flickers a brighter shade of white. "And What Is That Role Exactly?" she asks, arching one eyebrow. Not for the first time you're struck with a sense of envy; everytime you try and arch an eyebrow you just end up wiggling both of yours and looking like an idiot.

"I'll explain l8ter," you say with finality, "after the teams have 8een set. 8ut 8efore we move on, is there anyone else who wants to join the Fish 8itch Extermin8tion Squad?"

Dead silence. You shrug and add Kanaya's name to the list underneath the Condesce's face. "That's alright," you tell them. "From what I hear the Alpha kids really h8 her guts. I 8et they'll want a piece of her too, so Kanaya, if you end up joining them after the mission's complete, you won't 8e fighting alone."

You move on to the next face on the board. "Next up is Dog Jack. Now, Dog Jack is easily the most powerful adversary of the 8unch, in terms of pure physical capa8ility. There's nothing quite like the first guardian a8ilities to give someone an overwhelming tactical advantage. The a8ility to teleport anywhere in the session any time, or ANYONE anywhere any time, while having access to an inexhausti8le power supply from the green sun really makes it no contest, even against an otherwise awesome com8atant. If it were just him you had to deal with, I wouldn't like your odds, honestly, 8ut luckily for us, there's a major factor here which should mostly neutralize him during this huge melee, which is the prospitian carapace lady. Power-wise, she's an exactly even match for him, and she can't stand the guy. As a result, I'm m8king the executive decision not to assign any fighters to this mission- Rose why the fuck are you st8nding up what did I just say."

The enigmatic smirk has vanished from Rose's face, replaced by cold determination. It's the look of a girl who would face down a winged dogbeast of shadow and claws, who would give herself up to the things of slime and garbled unholy tongues just for the sake of revenge. You have loved this girl, but you are also afraid of her.

"That thing murdered my mother," Rose says, and each word that comes out of her mouth is precise and sharp-edged. Her lips curl back to reveal a mouth full of shining white teeth. "And I am going to kill it, and none of you are going to stop me."

You blink uselessly for a few moments before mustering up a smile. "Well. Ok8y! I'm not going to stop you then!" You say cheerfully, and turn away in order to escape the furious fire of Rose's eyes. You scribble a faint approximation of Bec's face on the whiteboard and mark down Rose's name. The squeak of the dry-erase marker is the only sound in the intimidated silence that fell after Rose spoke.*

"Um, that aside, we have Lord Jack!" You smile, desperately trying to smooth over the awkwardness still lingering from Rose's sudden decision to prove that she is a stone cold badass who would not hesitate to cut a bitch. "I'm just going to say, first of all, that I really don't... understand Lord Jack? He's n8tive to the Alpha session. He got prototyped or infused with or possessed 8y... part of Lord English? Honestly I don't get how it happened or what happened, all I know is that he exists, something happened 8luh 8luh 8luh, and now we have to deal with his rain8ow eyed monstrosity."

"Regardless! This will make his attacks quite lethal, and he will 8e EXTREMELY difficult to kill. In fact, that fucking rain8ow energy might just give him the highest constitution ranking of any adversary, possi8ly making him the toughest one here to actually kill off. The only reason he's not at Dog Tier threat level is 8ecause, for all his power, at least it's localized to wherever he happens to 8e. He can't teleport like Dog Jack, and he's a8out as slow as any of us lowly non-omnipotents. He's not quite as relevant to keep occupied, or even to defeat, as the Condesce herself, 8ut rest assured, he's still going to 8e HUGE TROU8LE when he gets here."

You drop your arm from where you'd been gesturing at the little Jack doodle and ask "so with that in mind, who wants di8s on these sorry motherfuckers?

Dave leans back in his chair and raises a hand."i guess that's me," he drawls, dropping his arm to rest around Karkat's shoulders. "rumors are swirlin around that ive gotta beat LE anyway, which is probably bogus but w/e. but killing this guy seems like the next best thing? so maybe if i could do that, i could like." He shrugs, scootching over a little in his chair to nuzzle closer to Karkat. "put the prophecy to rest."

You consider this notion and find that it makes sense to you, and you nod in agreement. "That sounds reasona8le, Strider," you announce, and shoot him a small smirk. "For what it's worth, I never 8ought into the idea that you were supposed to 8e the one to defeat English anyways." Mostly because you plan on defeating him yourself, you think, but Dave doesn't know that. He grins back at you anyways. Strider's a good friend, and you find yourself glad that you never succumbed to your stupid petty jealousy and tried to kill him off.

"Anyone else?" You ask, your gaze sweeping over the table. It is Terezi who tilts her head and sticks one hand up in the air to volunteer, and despite knowing that this was inevitable your bloodpusher seems to stutter in your chest.

"1 GU3SS 1'LL GO," Terezi says, entirely oblivious to your tension, and you freeze.

Once, back before the Game, you'd been out FLARPing with Eridan. You remember crouching next to him as he'd lay on the ground, squinting through the sights of his rifle, waiting for your purpleblood opponent to wander into Ahab's crosshairs. It had taken aaaaaaaages, and you'd eventually grown bored enough that you stopped paying attention. When Eridan finally, finally squeezed the trigger and took the shot, the bullet whistling through the air, his grunt as the rifle kicked back into his shoulder, the sound cracking deafeningly in the quiet of the forest, you'd been so startled that you'd screamed, and Eridan had teased you for hours afterwards.

"you kneww i wwas goin to shoot him vvris, wwhatre you actin all scared for?" he'd laughed, and you'd snarled, hit him in the jaw, and he'd stopped giggling at you then in favor of grappling with you so he could pin you to the ground. That was good; you knew what to do with that, even if your black feelings to him had all the substance of cardboard. You knew how to act, how to behave. You didn't know how to be vulnerable to anyone- anyone except for Terezi.

Now you feel like you're back there in the forest, shock still rippling through you, taken off-guard by something you'd known was coming. You'd known that Terezi was inevitably going to have to fight someone. There isn't anyone that you can spare, after all; even with the Alpha kids in tow, you know that the lot of you will be spread a little thin across the battles. And she would never want to stay away from the battle; Terezi loves being in the thick of things, in the chaos and blood of a fight. She always took her own sense of joy out of FLARPing, even if she restrained herself. These sweeps on the meteor, you had known that eventually, she would fight in the battle. It doesn't hurt any less having known it was coming.

Still- you can't help but see the images flicker behind your eyelids, bright and technicolor, snapshots from your worst nightmares. Terezi bruised and broken, Terezi coughing around a mouth of teal, Terezi's sightless red eyes wide in shock as a blade skewers her through the stomach. You can't help the way you stiffen at the thought of her dead, and you're opening your mouth before you can stop yourself.

"8ut Terezi-"

She swivels around to look at you. Her eyes bore into the spot right next to your head, and her face is entirely calm, all her features smooth and unbothered, but you know that she is ready to 'throw down', as Dave has said, under the surface. Terezi has made it clear in the past that she doesn't want you undermining or trying to override her choices. It is one boundary that you have always respected, even when it's hard.

"1S TH3R3 4 PROBL3M, VR1SK4?" She asks you steelily, and you force yourself to breathe. This is Terezi's choice, and you can't think of her as your moirail/kismesis/flushcrush/?????? right now. You have to be objective, and so do your concerns.

You meet her gaze (even though that doesn't really matter, considering she can't see you). "No, I just want you to 8e sure. You're not immortal, remem8er. And this one is going to 8e tough."

She softens a little, her mouth quirking up into a little smile. "YOU S41D W3 N33D GOOD F1GHT3RS TO GO 4T TH1S GUY, 4ND 1 TH1NK 1'M PR3TTY D3C3NT. 4T L34ST 4T ST4BB1NG TH1NGS. SO 1'LL GO." She pauses to shoot Dave a smirk. "B3S1D3S... *SOM3ON3* H4S TO W1TN3SS D4V3'S H3RO1SM, 1F H3 W4NTS TO B3 L3T OFF TH3 HOOK FOR TH4T PROPH3CY." She makes her little >:] face, and you can't help but laugh, holding up your hands to show your acquiescence.

"Hey, it's your decision! Anyone else?" You look around the room and find that there's no one, which you suppose is to be expected, so you move on.

You tap the board with the end of the marker in emphasis. "That 8rings us to Ro8o Jack. He's the Jack origin8ting from our session." You glance at Karkat, open your mouth to make a comment, and then promptly close it when Terezi shoots you a Look™. "Now apparently he's got some cy8ernetic upgrades? Who the fuck knows how that happened, or for that matter, why or how he's on his way here now. My mind 8oggles trying to even picture the amount of stupid shit he's 8een through 8etween now and when we knew him. Put this on the ever lengthening list of gar8age that doesn't matter and no8ody cares a8out!"

Across the room, Karkat starts looking more and more upset. Apparently your efforts to be tactful have been less than stellar. Time to change the subject again!

"The fact is, we have no idea what his affili8tions are at this point, 8ut it's 8est to just plan for the worst, and assume this is just another scru8 we've gotta kill. He's the lowest on the threat level, though his various enhancements and accessories may pose more of a challenge than we 8argained for. So with that in mind, who wants di8s on this sorry motherfucker?"

No one responds for a few moments before Karkat rolls his eyes, lets out a long, beleaguered, put upon sigh, and raises his hand. "SINCE I'M ONE OF THE ONLY ONES WHO DOESN'T HAVE AN ASSIGNMENT *COUGH* VRISKA *COUGH*, I GUESS IT'S UP TO ME. BUT LET IT BE KNOWN THAT I'M EXTREMELY UNWILLING TO DO THIS AND I WILL COMPLAIN ABOUT IT EVERY STEP OF THE WAY.".

You ignore Karkat's snarking- never let it be said that you're not capable of being the bigger person!- in favor of smiling and writing his name down under the Robo Jack's face. "Thank you Karkat! We all appreci8 your contri8ution to the fight, though you pro8a8ly won't end up fighting him 8ecause of your own unique task with Kanaya. 8ut that 8rings us to our last item of 8usiness- the Mega Douche8ag himself."

You point at the scribbled head shaped like a deflated sportsphere. "Lord English. Easily the most difficult opponent that any of us will ever have to face. I mean, this guy is the 8ig 8ad. English is the guy who stacked the whole deck against us from the start, rigging shit to go haywire, wiping out our race, blowing up universes, exterimin8ting ghosts, slaughtering dark gods, and shattering reality itself. He can't 8e fought with conventional means, and he's virtually indestructible- except for a certain special weapon, somewhere out in paradox space. There's 8een a search to retrieve this weapon, 8ut people stopped trying after a while. I figure it just needs a good kick in the 8utt to get it started 8ack up again. So that'll 8e my jo8; defeating Lord English."

You puff out your chest a little, hands on your hips, and smile down at the people at the table, who seem perfectly alright with this plan, with the notable exception of Terezi, who is holding on to the head of her cane so tightly that her knuckles are white, staring you down like you're an escaped criminal and she's the daring legislacerator tasked with taking you down. It's a frightening look, and you're not particularly fond of being on the receiving end of it. You look away.

"Um, any questions?"

Kanaya raises her hand. "Yes Actually You Still Haven't Told Me And Karkat What Our 'Special Mission' Is Yet And I'd Like To Know What Exactly You Think I Need To Be Doing That's More Important Than Killing The Condesce."

You roll your eyes. Figures that she'd be all pissed off about you pulling her from the fight. "Relaaaaaaaax, Kanaya! It's just a precaution. Anyways, Karkat and Kanaya: your jo8 is actually super important to making sure we win!"

"WOW, VRISKA ACTUALLY ENTRUSTING ME WITH SOMETHING IMPORTANT? AM I IN A SUPER SURREAL DREAMBUBBLE?" Karkat stage whispers to Dave, who snickers a little bit, the traitor. You ignore them.

"Anyways! This shit is important," you say, and your voice hardens. This is Serious Business™ after all, and the rest of the table shuts up, having picked up on that fact.

"Kanaya, Karkat. The two of you 8OTH have to go to Jade's planet and see Echidna. Even though this session is a8out as far from "normal" as it can possi8ly get, the same 8asic rules apply. Someone needs to seek an audience with her, and get her to agree to release the genesis frog. Or, the tadpole that grows up to 8ecome the frog, which is the stage of development he's in at this point." You shrug a little, because the developmental stage of the frog is largely irrelevant at this point.

You make eye contact with Kanaya, who seems to have grasped the importance of what you're asking her to do. "Remem8er, Kanaya? You had to do this on your planet, to get our frog released into Skaia."

"Yes," she acknowledges, her eyes far off in reminiscence. "She Asked Me To Do Something Impossible, To Which I Replied 'Thats Impossible'. So She Ended Up Demanding That I Fight Her. So I Did. Which... Made Me Feel Sad. Id Rather Not Have To Do That Again." She looks up at you, eyes wide. "Will I Have To Do That Again?"

You shrug, but your expression is not without sympathy. "If that's what she wants, then yes." Kanaya groans in frustration across the table, but doesn't say anything else, which you appreciate.

"Normally this would 8e Jade's jo8, but as we know, Jade might 8e out of commission at that point, considering what the Condesce has planned for her. So it falls to Kanaya in her place, the person that Echidna will want in her a8sence. Since you're also a Space player, you'll understand her weird gar8led language."

"WAIT, WAIT," Karkat interrupts, and you suppress a sigh. Honestly you deserve a medal for putting up with this bullshit! "I GET WHY KANAYA HAS TO GO ON THIS MISSION, BUT WHAT ABOUT ME?"

"I was getting there, you idiot!" You snap at him. "The reason Karkat has to come with is 8ecause Echidna requested him specifically for some a8surd reason."

Karkat makes a noise that signifies his utter unwillingness to do anything productive and slams his head on the table. "UGH. WHY THE HELL WOULD SHE WANT TO SEE ME?" he whines against the cold surface of the table.

At this rate, you're going to strain your eyeballs from rolling them this hard. Alright, Vantas wants to be a whiny little bitch? Then that's how you'll play this.

"No idea!" you shrug innocently, batting your eyes at him even though his eyes are firmly shut and facing the surface of the alchemized table. That won't stop you, though. "Denizens are mysteeeeeeeerious. May8e she wants a knight along? Or a 8lood player? Or may8e she just has a 8one to pick with you in particular." You tap your chin as if you're remembering something, and then fake shocked realization as you lean forward. "You know, since you and Kanaya were 8oth involved in the frog 8reeding stuff in our session, and, let's face it." You lean forward and smile nastily at Karkat, who's propped his head up with one hand and is staring at you angrily. "You kind of messed that up!"

Dave sucks in a breath, perhaps to tell you off, but you're on a roll now, and you don't stop. "You were pretty hasty and reckless and careless a8out it, and the result was a defective frog." You turn to the side, waving a hand in protest of Karkat's imminent excuses. "Sure, there's more to it than that. Like pro8lems with the human session that were totally interrel8ted with ours due to cyclical time gar8age, 8ut you get the point. Echidna pro8a8ly doesn't take kindly to people who are cavalier with the sacred frog duties. That's kind of her domain, like, the propag8tion of existence and all that. So may8e, just maaaaaaaay8e, you've got some stuff to atone for 8efore she agrees to let another precious frog out of her divine custody?"

Karkat, still slumped on the table, slams his head back down on its surface again in frustration."YOU'RE DOING THIS-" he gestures toward you vaguely and ends up just indicating your entire self. "-ON PURPOSE, AREN'T YOU. BEING A HUGE BITCH, BLUH BLUH, AND ANTAGONIZING ME ABOUT THINGS THAT HAPPENED LITERAL SWEEPS AGO IN ORDER TO MAKE ME NERVOUS, BECAUSE YOU JUST LOVE TO FUCK WITH ME. WELL, THERE'S NO NEED, SERKET! I AM ALREADY NERVOUS. I AM SO FUCKING NERVOUS! I DO NOT WANT TO TALK TO THE RIDDLING SNAKE DENIZEN GODDESS LADY ON MY BEST DAY, AND LET ME TELL YOU THAT THIS IS FAR FROM MY BEST DAY, PARTIALLY BECAUSE YOU ARE IN IT!

Terezi is outright glaring at you now, alongside Kanaya. You'd bet a thousand boonbucks that Dave is too, under his shades, and you wince. Maybe that was a little too harsh! You don't particularly care about hurting Karkat's feelings, but upsetting your friends is something that you've tried to stop doing, so you rein in the nasty smile on your face and try to soften your features into something resembling regret or sympathy. Judging from the way Rose frowns at you, you're pretty sure that you just end up looking constipated, but it's an attempt, and that's what matters.

"Karkat," (oh gog now you're saying his first name. He better not think that this means that you, like, 'care' about him or whatever) "relax. Personally, I am guessing that this will just 8e a formality, since she's always 8een so... formal? Going to see her is like getting the 8lessing from a queen, or some huge mythical matriarch 8efore proceeding with some incredi8ly important event, or claiming a cosmic reward. Or may8e you'll have to just kill her again? I don't see what difference it makes. Really, who knows what her real purposes are? They're pro8a8ly totally unfathoma8le."

You're aware that you're rambling at this point, and your cheeks are flushing a little from your nervousness. This is why you hate trying to apologize, you always get it wrong and end up too vulnerable. You should probably stop while you're ahead, but you've never been really good at that.

"Echidna is kind of a 8ig Deal Denizen. One of the real heavy hitters, like that other guy... the really strong one with the ridiculous name," you prattle on, snapping your fingers in an effort to remember. "Oh, yeah, Yalda8aoth. Him! Anyways, she might even 8e the 8iggest deal. She's the mother of all denizens. I mean, not in a literal sense. Like, I really dou8t she physically spawned them all. That would really suck as a jo8, don't you think? 8ut! That's her title, so if she wants you to do something, it's serious. And if you need to do something of massive cosmic significance, like release a frog that contains an entire universe in its 8elly, then 8y the same token, it has to go through her. You should be honored that she specifically requested you, Vantas!"

"AND YET HERE I AM, INEXPLICABLY NOT HONORED AT ALL," Karkat mutters to himself. You let that remark slide because you're a very gracious person. "ANYTHING ELSE? PERSONALLY I'D RATHER NOT SPEND ONE OF MY LAST DAYS OF RELATIVE PEACE LISTENING TO YOU, SERKET."

"The sentiment is mutual, Vantas! And no, there's nothing else on the agenda for tonight. Just..." You pause for a moment, trying to think of how to express the desire within you without betraying your stupid sentimentality. You want your meteor crew to survive this, because despite all your posturing you do care about them. You want them alive.

"Just stay alive, okay?"

They nod back at you, and you think that they get what you're trying to say. Your bloodpusher aches with that, and you look away, swallowing back the rush of emotion that the thought brings up in you.

"Alright. Dismissed."

Dave and Karkat and Rose and Kanaya get up, talking amongst themselves as they do, pushing in their chairs and exiting the room. You busy yourself with cleaning off the whiteboard as they leave, and when the sounds of conversation fade into the distance, you sigh and turn back around to come face to face with Terezi.

Karkat's whining had made you almost forget about that look Terezi had sent you after you'd told the group about your plan to go toe-to-toe with Lord English, but she clearly hasn't forgotten it. She's right up against you, crowding you up against the whiteboard, and she radiates a righteous rage pure enough to give the Sufferer a run for his money, her red shades brightly accusing you.

Here, now, you can see Redglare in her, in the drawings Mindfang had done in her journal. The green-teal scars across her eyes in strange, dancing symbols, the wave of her long black curls- the line of her back, the way her fingers clench around her canehead, the sharp edges of her serrated teeth. This girl, you think with a sudden pang of regret, would have been the finest legislacerator Alternia would have ever known. The way she looks at you is straight out of a courtroom drama.

"YOU'R3 GO1NG TO F1GHT LORD 3NGL1SH."

The words are full of hope that you'll deny the statement, tell her she's wrong, but this isn't something you can renounce. The only thing you can do is soften a little, touch her shoulder in a semblance of comfort, but Terezi Pyrope has always been able to see through you, and her eyes are wide and full of betrayal.

"I'm sorry, Terezi-"

"NOT H3R3," she tells you, her voice suddenly flat and words clipped. You want to wring the pain out of her until she is dry with joy and ill with thriving, but she takes your wrist and pulls you along. "COM3 ON."

* * *

You follow her to the quarters the two of you share, trailing along after her as she tugs you along by your wrist. You think that this is a fairly apt description of your relationship; one of you pulling the other along and the other honor-bound to follow whether it be through some sick twisted sense of duty or through some sick and twisted idea of love. 

When she tugs you along, you follow. That's the way things are.

The two of you reach your quarters and she pulls you inside, nearly slamming the door behind you. She lets go of your wrist to do it, and immediately you miss the contact; the feeling of her callused fingers and soft palm on your scarred wrist. 

She turns to face you and you stare at her in apology. You hope she can see- or, well, smell- the way you don't want to leave her. 

"YOUR3 GO1NG TO F1GHT LORD 3NGL1SH." It's still not a question, but you nod anyways.

"Yeah."

"YOUR3-" She breaks off, turns away from you, and you take a step forward on instinct to comfort her, but she shakes her head and you stop, feel yourself rooted in place, uselessly trying to find some way to say the right thing, to make her happy.

She takes her glasses off and sets them on the alchemized desk next to her, pressing the heels of her palms to her eyes. For a few minutes she stands there, breathing slowly, and you listen to the slow rise and fall of her air sac, the soothing reminder that she's here. You have that sound memorized, you treasure every moment you get to hear it and relish in its fact: Terezi Pyrope is alive.

Finally, she speaks. "BUT WHY?"

Her voice is cracking and sounds far older than it has any right to be, and when you cross the room to face her and place your hands on her shoulders, she shudders slow and long in response. Stupid Terezi, you think, unbearably fond and sad at once. Never willing to see someone dead.

"8ecause it has to 8e me," you say, soft, voice thick with tears because you never like to see her hurting, "it has to 8e me, Terezi. I'm expenda8le, I always have 8een. I've done fucked up things and I'm the worst person on this meteor. You would have killed me and I would have deserved it, Terezi, no, don't you lie to yourself," because she's shaking her head, she's denying it and it's true, it is, she has to hear this, "and I have to 8e a hero, I have to redeem myself for everything I've done."

She's crying now, crying freely, tears rolling down her cheeks in trails of teal. "YOUR3 NOT 3XP3ND4BL3 TO M3, VR1SK4. YOU N3V3R H4V3 B33N," she tells you, hands on your face, cupping your cheeks, and you smile even though this whole goddamn thing is breaking you in half.

"You don't have to lie to me, Terezi," you tell her, and brush away one tear with your thumb. "We've got a week left 8efore the 8attle. I know you feel like I'm your responsi8ility or some 8ullshit like that, 8a8e. Oh sure, you care, 8ecause we're moirails and we used to 8e Scourge Sisters, 8ut not- not that much."

Terezi pulls back from you a minute, her eyes narrowing, nostrils flaring as she sniffs the air- maybe to get a sense of what you're saying, of the look on your face, and then her face goes incredulous with shock. You don't know why- this is the truth, the two of you have known this since the beginning of your moirallegiance, despite how unspoken it was, but she's looking at you like you're the biggest idiot of all time.

"VR1SK4 S3RK3T," Terezi says, each word pronounced slow and overenunciated, "YOU 4R3 4N 1D1OT."

You open your mouth to protest- mostly on instinct- and then she kisses you.

The kiss is mostly you flailing backwards in shock, so you don't really get a sense of what's happening until she breaks away for a moment, and then it sinks in, and-

You're chasing after her mouth before you can stop yourself, and she meets you in the middle, brings up one hand to tug you downward just a bit, just so she can get better leverage, her tongue wet in your mouth and she tastes like chalk and red candy and you love it, you love her, you love this wild and beautiful girl who for some reason thinks that you're good enough to kiss.

She tilts her head and breaks away and says, "OF COURS3 YOU'R3 1MPORT4NT TO M3, YOU 1D1OT. 1 LOV3 YOU, YOU 4SSHOL3,", and kisses you again, and the night dissolves into just this- kissing, and touching, and the knowledge that Terezi Pyrope loves you.

After, when the two of you are curled up together in the recuperacoon, her snuggled up against the curve of your side, you turn to her and say, "Hey."

"Y34H?" She turns her face up to look at you, her face dopey with sleep, and you feel your bloodpusher ache.

"In the 8attle." You take a deep breath. "I'll do my 8est to come 8ack. For you."

Terezi snaps her head up to face you, her eyes wide and nostrils flared, shocked despite herself.

"YOU M34N 1T?"

"Yeah," you breath, and grin down at her. "Yeah. Really."

Her face lights up, brighter than a Green Sun, more precious than all the gold on Prospit, and she kisses you with all the ferocity and the gentleness that make up Terezi Pyrope, and you think that for this girl, for the look on her face, you mean it. You really do.

This girl, who has been your worst enemy, your most frequent downfall; who has been your sister, also, your most beloved, your partner in crime; she is your scourge. She is your sister, and she wants you to live. And you still don't believe you're a good person. You never will. But she believes in you, she loves you, she wants you with her in the new world you're building, and for her- _for her_ \- you will try. You will try to come home for her.

It is so much easier to hate than it is to love, and you- you are not easy to love.

It's a good thing that Terezi Pyrope never settles for the easy thing to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for reading and sticking w/ me through this wild ride of a fic. i've had so much fun and so much motivation, and each and every comment has been near and dear to my heart. 
> 
> i would especially like to thank literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte for his comments, each and everyone of which has been so kind and uplifting. ze always seems to put so much thought into zir comments, and it means a ton to me that he shares his thoughts with me. thank you so much!


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